Overview
Muhūrta (Sanskrit: मुहूर्त, romanised: muhūrtaṃ) is a unit of time used in the Hindu calendar, alongside other traditional units such as nimiṣa, kāṣṭhā and kalā. It forms part of the system of timekeeping employed in classical Sanskrit literature and ritual practice.
In the Brāhmaṇa texts, muhūrta denotes a specific division of time, equivalent to one-thirtieth of a day, or a period of approximately 48 minutes. The same texts also attest to an alternative, more general sense of the word, meaning simply "moment". In the Rigveda, the older of these usages predominates, with muhūrta exclusively carrying the meaning "moment" rather than a fixed measure.
The technical scheme further subdivides each muhūrta into smaller units. One muhūrta is composed of 30 kalā, where one kalā equals about 1.6 minutes, or 96 seconds. Each kalā is in turn divided into 30 kāṣṭhā, with one kāṣṭhā amounting to approximately 3.2 seconds. This nested structure of divisions reflects the broader Hindu approach to enumerating time through successive subdivisions.
Through these definitions, the muhūrta occupies a position between the broader span of a day and the finer instants measured in kalā and kāṣṭhā, and it has been used in traditional contexts associated with the Hindu calendar.